We might have gone to the same palm reader
if we believed in palm readers,
but porcupines don’t, as a matter of instinct,
and me – my lifeline fades half-way
across my hand.

And if the psychic had squinted
into your palm’s inked crease,
would she have warned you away
from dogs?

And what would she have said
to your mother, who, I suspect, quivers close-by–
That you can do everything right, even heroically,
and yet not save each day.

The dog, its eyes still able
to show hurt, is hurried to the vet.
but I come back to you,
turning with a stick your torn form,
hiding what’s been made meat.

Sometimes our natures
fail us -like the dog who swoops
into a muzzle of needles.
Sometimes, it’s simply chance
that lets us down – like you, sniffed out
by a lonely stream–
Then there are times like this, those
like me, who try to see ourselves as immune,
deciding that thumbs,
sticks, cameras (maybe even
guns) will protect us from
random fates; will save our young too
from the clutch of the
unreadable.

Your fingers stretch out,
in the position I’ve managed,
your palm gently cupped
and so like mine that we might have gone
to the same palm reader, had we believed
our lives were held
in the lines of our hands.

**********************************

I’ve missed you all terribly! But I have been very busy with my job, and adjusting to new life of back and forth – city and country -and some other pretty serious life issues. And I have at least been looking at one of the novels (I am tempted to say, stupid novels), I am trying to rewrite.

The experience described above has been very much on my mind too though — a porcupine killed by the dog of a friend and neighbor (not my old blind Pearl) and I have been trying and trying to write something about it. I still don’t think I’ve gotten down what I wanted to say, and I’m sorry to those of you that find the picture disturbing. It is disturbing. Very sad on all counts.

Not meaning to be grim– though I spent all day working on things for my job, which does make me feel a bit grim on a Sunday night–but came across this in a nearby field, and thought, well, seize the day. And photo.